


scream it to the nothingness

by heartequals (savvygambols)



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Growing Up Together, M/M, Two POVs, sir that's my emotional support dreamscape best friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 16:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18553351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savvygambols/pseuds/heartequals
Summary: Zhenya has always had weird dreams. / Sid has never been alone.





	scream it to the nothingness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hatoyona](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hatoyona/gifts).



> hatoyona needed a cheer-up present because the Pens got swept in the playoffs this year :( thanks for beta-reading your own present!
> 
> title from "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes: "man, oh man, you're my best friend / I scream it to the nothingness / there ain't nothing that I need."

Zhenya has a bad day at school, gets into a fight and shoved into a locker, has his lunch money stolen again. Hockey practice is cancelled because of the snow storm. His mama and papa aren’t home and Denis is on the phone with his girlfriend, ignoring him. Zhenya throws his backpack on the floor and crawls into bed after taking his shoes off. _Sleep_ , he tells himself. _Sleep, sleep, sleep._

Old Mrs. Belinskaya, his geography teacher, is always hounding him about breathing meditations to calm down because she sees how he gets into moods. Zhenya always thinks it’s stupid but sometimes when he really wants to sleep, he breathes in and out over each word. In- _sleep_. Out- _sleep_.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t but today, gratefully, it does. He dreams of a hockey rink with English words on advertisements that he doesn’t quite know how to read. He’s been here before. It looks and feels lonely, too empty, until he feels someone shove him from behind.

“Hey,” he complains, turning around. Sid stands in front of him, cheeks bright pink. 

“Hey Zhenya,” says Sid. He can’t pronounce Zhenya’s name right in his Canadian accent, even though Zhenya has been trying to teach him literally since Sid learned how to speak. Sid learned how to speak later than Zhenya. Zhenya has always had weird dreams.

“Hi Sid,” he says and opens his arms. Sid hugs him. Sid’s so much shorter than Zhenya is. It’s weird, because Sid’s been present in Zhenya’s dreams for so long, an invisible friend who has grown up with him. Zhenya always thought Sid would keep growing, physically, with him. But Zhenya is taller than Sid now that’s he’s fourteen and hitting a huge growth spurt. He can put his head on top of Sid’s when they hug.

“Why are you so sad?” says Sid.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Zhenya.

“Yes, it does,” says Sid. He pulls away. “I don’t want you to be sad.”

Sid really is, besides Zhenya’s oldest friend, his closest friend. It’s stupid and pathetic, because Sid’s literally a dream, he’s not real, he’s made up, he’s just neurons firing randomly in Zhenya’s brain for Zhenya’s entire life which have created a small Canadian boy to keep Zhenya company for an hour or two when he’s lonely and sad.

“I got shoved in a locker,” says Zhenya.

“Ugh, again?” says Sid.

“Yeah. And they stole my lunch money and told me if I told anyone, they’d beat me up again.” Zhenya shifts uncomfortably from skate to skate. “And hockey practice got cancelled so I couldn’t do anything fun today. And Mrs. Belinskaya kept asking me questions about my emotional health during detention. I don’t even know what she means by emotional health!”

Sid giggles. “I love Mrs. Belinskaya. She sounds so funny whenever you talk about her.”

“She’s terrible. You would love her, because you’re weird like she is.”

“I don’t know how to meditate though,” says Sid. He takes a deep breath in and lets it out with a long “om.”

Zhenya shoves him. “You should be her student then. I’m tired of detention in her classroom. People just want to beat me up even more when they see me in her classroom after school because they don’t like her either.”

“That sucks,” says Sid. “She sounds cool.”

“She’s not cool at all! She’s weird!”

“Zhenya, you’re super weird,” says Sid with a half-smile.

Zhenya tackles him. Suddenly they’re wearing helmets, which is good, because they land on the ice in a heap.

“Hey, come on!” says Sid. He shoves Zhenya off. “If I get a concussion before my career even starts, I’ll be so mad at you.”

“You won’t get a concussion,” says Zhenya, rolling his eyes. “You can’t.” It’s a dream. None of this is real. Sid is super fussy about this stuff though, always has been.

“I could,” says Sid, grumpy. “It’s always a possibility. A guy called me delicate yesterday. He said I had birdbones and I should be careful because everyone in the NHL is going to want to beat me up. Then he punched me in the chest.”

Zhenya lies on his back on the ice and stares up at the ceiling of the rink, at the fluorescent lights that light up the rink in that impersonal, comforting way. He looks over at Sid, sitting next to him with his legs sticking straight out in front of him. Zhenya frowns. “He punched you in the chest?”

Sid lies down next to him. “Yeah,” he says. “People are just like that around me, I guess. I bring out the worst in people during games. Like, they’ll be super normal around me off ice and then we get in a game and all of a sudden I’m a target.”

“That sucks,” says Zhenya. “Why do people hate you so much?”

“I’m better than them,” says Sid. “I always have been.”

“You’re not better than me,” says Zhenya confidently. “But I wouldn’t punch you in the face if I met you in a game.”

“We’ve never played a game together!” Sid protests. “Also, I’ve known you for my entire life. You don’t count.”

Zhenya pulls himself into a sitting position. “I count!” he says, shoving Sid’s leg. 

Sid looks up at him, smiling. “You’re my best friend,” he says. “I just think that if we weren’t friends and we were playing against each other, you’d probably try to high stick me.”

“You’re mine too,” says Zhenya, oddly touched.

“Cool,” says Sid. “Wanna play Horse?”

“You always want to play Horse,” Zhenya complains.

“You got a better idea? Your backchecking sucks, so we could always work on that.”

“My backchecking is fine! Come on, let’s play.” Zhenya gets to his feet.

Sid follows. They skate to the door where the pucks and sticks are kept.

“These sticks are trash,” says Zhenya. “I wish we had better ones.”

“They’re the ones I use at practice,” says Sid, rolling his eyes. “Sorry they’re not up to your standards.”

Zhenya grabs a bucket of pucks and skates to center ice. A net has appeared at each end of the rink, or maybe they’ve always been there and Zhenya didn’t notice.

He spells “horse” first and crows about it to Sid, cackling. Sid shoves him and demands a rematch.

They shoot pucks until Denis comes bursting into Zhenya’s room, waking him up.

“Wake up, sleepy,” he says, yanking all the blankets off of Zhenya. “Papa bought pizza.”

Zhenya squints at him, adjusting to being awake. He sits up and stretches.

“Were you dreaming of your boyfriend again?” Denis says.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” says Zhenya, shoving him off his bed. “He’s just my friend.”

“But it’s weird that you always see him in your dreams,” says Denis, looking up at him from the floor. “I dream of my girlfriend sometimes, but like, we’re doing stuff.”

“Ew,” says Zhenya. He gets out of bed and kicks Denis in the thigh. “We just play hockey games.”

“That’s weirder. You’re playing hockey with a figment of your imagination. Your best friend besides me is a figment of your imagination.”

“You’re dreaming of doing gross sex stuff with your girlfriend.”

“Like you don’t want to do that stuff with Sid.”

“Of course I want to do that stuff, but I don’t want to do it with Sid or any other boy!” Zhenya snaps.

Denis rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

Zhenya kicks him in the leg again. Denis grabs his leg and yanks Zhenya to the ground so they can wrestle.

“Hey!” their dad yells from the dining room. “You boys hungry or what?”

Zhenya lands a punch to Denis’ stomach and says, “yeah, we’re coming!”

“I hate you,” wheezes Denis.

“Good,” says Zhenya. He rolls to his feet and gives Denis a hand up.

“I just want to say,” says Denis, as he brushes himself off and straightens his t-shirt so that Papa doesn’t yell at them for acting like children, “that I’m here for you, okay?”

“Okay,” says Zhenya. He smiles uncomfortably, tugging at his own shirt. “Thanks.”

Denis claps him on the shoulder. He’s taller than Zhenya, but only barely. “Come on before Papa gets mad.”

Zhenya hopes he dreams of Sid that night. He just wants to play hockey with someone who likes him.

 

 

Sid wakes up when his baby sister smacks him in the face. It’s not the way he wanted to wake up.

“Taylor,” he says, annoyed.

“Sid,” she says, and hits his forehead and then his chin. “Sid. Sid.”

“What,” he says.

She stares down at him, all three years of herself filled with gravitas. Then she holds up her juicebox and slams it on his chest so hard that apple juice explodes out of the straw.

“Taylor,” he says. “That’s not nice.” There’s juice on his shirt. He’s going to be sticky in about 30 seconds and he hadn’t planned on taking a shower before school.

Taylor leaves her juice box on his chest and climbs off his bed. She toddles out of his bedroom, stopping only to give him a look that seems to say, in words she does not yet know how to put into a sentence, “you’re a huge loser.”

Sid throws an arm over his face and groans. He was having a nice dream too. One of the ones where he was skating with Zhenya. Those are his favorite dreams. He love skating with Zhenya; Sid has so much fun when he skates with Zhenya. They play so well together. They play like they were meant to be together.

But obviously they weren’t meant to be together because Zhenya isn’t real. Sid’s brain was hard-wired from birth to have someone grow up with him in his dreams who is basically perfect for him as a teammate and a friend. He knows it’s weird to have a friend that his brain made up. He knows this and he knows that when Taylor is old enough to tell him in words what a loser he is that his best friend is literally a dream, just some dumb part of his imagination, she will tell him and she’ll be right. But Zhenya is his best friend and it was a nice dream and knowing he is such a huge loser that even his three year old sister can tell just makes Sid grumpy now that he’s covered in apple juice and awake.

“Sid!” his mom calls from downstairs. “If you’re not out of bed in 1 minute, I’m sending Taylor up again!”

“I’m awake!” he yells back. 

“Are you out of bed?”

He shoves away the covers and rolls off his bed to land on the floor with a thump loud enough for his mom to hear downstairs.

“Good man,” his dad says, passing by Sid’s open door. He’s adjusting his tie and he looks chipper. “Work hard at practice today. ”

“Yeah,” says Sid. He stands up. “I will.”

He doesn’t want to go to school. He doesn’t want to go to practice. He wants to go back to sleep.

 

 

Zhenya lies in a cold hotel room in Raleigh, shivering under a blanket and wishing the NHL had let him stay with his parents for the night. He’s not a mama’s boy, but he needs someone to tell him it’s going to be okay.

_Breathe in_ , he thinks to himself. _Sleep. Breathe out. Sleep._

He dreams of a rink. He doesn’t recognize it and can’t read the advertisements -- it looks like French -- but he does recognize the lone figure skating in circles around a goal at the far end, stick in hand, chasing a puck around.

“Sid!” Zhenya calls out, feeling safer than he has in months.

The stick clatters to the ice and Sid comes flying down the ice, always faster than Zhenya remembers, and runs straight into Zhenya, wrapping arms around his waist. Zhenya hugs him back, sliding backwards a little at the impact.

“Zhenya, Zhenya, Zhenya,” Sid chants. His familiar Canadian accent pronouncing Zhenya’s name wrong makes Zhenya feel so, so warm inside. He presses his face against Zhenya’s neck briefly and then looks up at him, smile on his face. “Hi, I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” said Zhenya. “I haven’t seen you in, um--”

“Two years,” said Sid. “I thought maybe we were done. I thought we wouldn’t see each other again.”

Zhenya had forgotten how realistic Sid is, how he seems to have his own life inside of Zhenya’s dreams, away from Zhenya where he can’t be seen or known. It’s weird but it’s comforting at this point, that Zhenya had -- has -- a friend who comes to him in his dreams with stories. It’s a nice gift from his brain to himself.

“What’s wrong?” Sid asks.

“I’m getting drafted in the NHL tomorrow,” says Zhenya. “I’m nervous. I’m worried no one will want me.”

He couldn’t even tell his dad that, but Sid has been with Zhenya through everything. For a brief period of time, Sid _was_ everything. After school and hockey and all the annoyances that pushed Zhenya down, it had always been a relief to fall asleep at night and see his best friend for a little while before he disappeared from wherever Zhenya’s brain conjured him. Zhenya can tell Sid anything.

“Drafted? Hockey-drafted?” says Sid. “Oh, cool. I was going to watch the draft tomorrow.”

“Maybe you’ll see me,” says Zhenya, trying to joke. He’s not sure he succeeds, when he feels Sid’s arms tighten around him.

“I’m sure I will,” says Sid. “I haven’t played with you in two years, but you’re probably still as good as me.”

“Probably as good?” Zhenya demands. Sid is clearly trying to get a rise out of him, judging by the goofy smile he’s got, eyes crinkling as he looks at Zhenya. 

He’s gotten cuter since Zhenya last saw him too. Figures that his dreams wouldn’t leave him alone over _that_ particular crisis either.

“Yeah, probably,” says Sid. “I’m pretty good now. I’ve been playing in juniors, not that you’d know.”

“Prove it,” says Zhenya, shoving him away. “I’ve been playing too. I’m getting drafted tomorrow.”

Sid slides backwards on the ice, laughing. “Get a stick, Zhenya,” he says, and heads off towards the other end of the ice.

Zhenya finds a pile of sticks just outside the door to the rink. They’re all garbage, so he chooses the least beat-up one and heads back to Sid.

Sid fires the puck at him, so hard that Zhenya nearly breaks his awful stick trying to stop it from nailing him in the thigh. “Hey!” he says. “Play fair. I have to look good tomorrow. I can’t limp around Raleigh like I’ve gotten into a fight, then no one will really want me.”

“I forgot that you’re a huge baby,” said Sid, skating up to him. He grins. Zhenya slashes the back of his knees and Sid goes down to the ice, giggling like he’s one-upped Zhenya, not the other way around.

Zhenya sticks his tongue at him. Sid gets to his feet and swipes the puck. “Come on,” he says. “I remember your backchecking kind of sucked. Did you get better at that in the last two years or are you still terrible at it?”

Zhenya swings out again but Sid skates backwards easily. He’s giggling again. “A huge baby,” he says.

“Big talk for someone as short as you,” says Zhenya.

“That is a weak chirp,” says Sid. “Also, come on, man, I’ve grown. A little.”

Zhenya raises his eyebrows.

“I mean, not as much as you, obviously, but I have grown! I just haven’t seen you in two years, you wouldn’t remember how short I used to be.”

“I remember you two years ago,” says Zhenya. “You definitely haven’t grown very much.”

“I have!”

“Sure.” 

Sid rolls his eyes and passes the puck to Zhenya. Zhenya passes back to him and they skate across the ice, passing to each other, quietly and easily. Zhenya has always loved how well he plays with Sid.

“I wish I could play with you for real,” he says to Sid.

Sid passes the puck back to him. “We are playing.”

“I mean, in the NHL on whatever team I play for.” Zhenya stops in front of the net. “I think it’d be easier if I already had a friend.”

Sid skates up to him. “You’ll always have me,” he promises.

Zhenya shoots the puck at the net. It goes in, obviously. “Yeah, I know, but it’d be easier if you were there with me. Every day. We’d be good teammates.”

Sid hits him in the shin. “You have me here,” he says. “That has to be enough for now.”

“I guess,” says Zhenya with a frown.

Sid hits him in the shin again. “Come on, tomorrow’s your draft day! You’ll make a ton of friends on your new team, it’ll be fine. You won’t see me for another two years and when we finally see each other again, I’ll be tall and you’ll be an All-Star. You’ve got this.”

Zhenya says, “you really think I could be an All-Star?” And then, “you really think you’ll be tall?”

“Shut up, Zhenya.”

Zhenya laughs. Sid glares at him. “Whatever, I can still kick your ass at one on one.”

“You couldn’t ever kick my ass in the first place,” says Zhenya.

“Get that puck,” says Sid, bossy. “Let’s play Horse and I’ll show you.”

“Why do you always want to play Horse?” Zhenya says. “What is it with you and horses?”

“What, are you worried I’ll beat you again?”

“No,” says Zhenya.

“Great, then you have nothing to complain about,” says Sid. He’s smiling. 

Zhenya retrieves the puck and they play children’s games for hours until Zhenya receives a courtesy wake-up call from the hotel.

He is still cold and he’s shoved all but one of the pillows from the bed onto the ground -- he is clutching the only remaining pillow to his chest -- but he feels a little more settled than he did when he fell asleep.

“Okay,” he says. He shoves his head against the pillow and takes a deep breath. It doesn’t smell like Sid, unfortunately. It smells like hotel detergent. He’ll see Sid again though. He hopes.

He closes his eyes, breathes. “Okay,” he says to himself. “I got this.”

 

 

Sid’s on Taylor-duty while his parents go to the grocery store, which is all kinds of annoying because he was planning on watching the draft and not his sister.

“Okay, Taylor,” he says seriously, the minute his parents leave the house. “I will give you, just, so much ice cream if you sit and watch the draft with me.”

“You’re so boring,” says Taylor. “Give me twenty dollars and I’ll leave you alone for the whole afternoon.”

“I have ten dollars and I’ll let you braid my hair,” says Sid. “And this includes ice cream.”

“Deal,” says Taylor.

They settle in front of the television, Sid on the floor and Taylor on the couch, with ice cream and every single barrette in the house. Sid’s hair is barely long enough to braid but he’s been putting off his summer haircut for a couple of weeks on now on a suspicion that he’d need longer hair as a bribe sometime. Taylor is so predictable in her weaknesses for ice cream and hairdressing, but she’s 8. Sid wanted to be a hairdresser when he was young too.

Taylor sings Barenaked Ladies to herself while she combs Sid’s hair. Sid watches the coverage intently, taking the occasional bite out of Taylor’s bowl of ice cream. He really shouldn’t be eating ice cream at all, but it’s early in the summer and he can go for a run after he watches the draft. And anyway, Taylor doesn’t mind and she won’t tell.

Alex Ovechkin goes first to Washington. No surprise there -- people have been talking him up all year. He’s a good player, strong. Sid’s over the hype already. Everyone in the NHL is strong.

Evgeni Malkin goes second to Pittsburgh. Sid hadn’t been paying much attention to him so he doesn’t know that much about him. Evgeni smiles nervously at the camera as he pulls on a Pittsburgh sweater. Sid drops the bowl of ice cream on his lap. “Fucking shit,” he says, eyes wide. “Holy shit. Zhenya.”

“Sid!” yells Taylor. She hits him hard on the top of the head with a hairbrush. “I’m telling Mom.”

“Oh my god,” says Sid, ignoring her. He leans toward the television as if that could get him closer. “It’s Zhenya. Holy shit.”

The camera moves away from Zhenya and Sid yells, without thinking, “no, wait!”

He needs to see Zhenya again. He has to know he’s not imagining this.

“What is wrong with you?” asks Taylor. She sounds weirded out; she sounds a little scared. “Sid? What’s wrong?”

“Taylor,” says Sid. He rubs his eyes and looks up at her. “You wouldn’t--okay, maybe you will believe me. This guy, Evgeni, Zhenya, I thought I dreamt him. I thought he was a dream! But he’s real!”

“Who is real? That guy?” Taylor points at the television. Zhenya is hugging his parents, looking emotional but so, so happy. Sid feels like he’s going to cry when he looks at Zhenya. He’s big, wears his emotions on his face. He’s everything Sid remembers from his dream last night. He’s everything Sid remembers from his childhood and part of his teenage years.

“You dreamed him?” asks Taylor, sounding confused, but not put off or even like she thinks he’s crazy.

“Yeah,” says Sid. “I thought I dreamt him up. He used to show up in my dreams when I was younger but I didn’t see him for two years until last night. Last night we played Horse at my rink in Rimouski. It was the longest dream I’d ever had with him. He was worried about the draft and I told him it was going to be okay? But I thought when I woke up this morning that I was just dreaming that because I’m worried about my own draft year.”

“That’s so weird,” says Taylor. “You guys share dreams? How does that work?”

“I don’t know,” says Sid. “I don’t know! I didn’t know he was real.” He looks at the television again but the draft has continued without suspending Zhenya in time and space for Sid to examine him, to make sure it’s really him. A thought occurs to him. “Maybe this is why we never got to spend too long with each other, especially when we got older. Because he was in Russia and I was in Canada and our schedules don’t overlap.”

Some seasons he’d see Zhenya more often when he was napping before games than at night. Maybe Sid got to spend all night with Zhenya because Zhenya is in Raleigh for the draft. Things are starting to make sense to Sid. Zhenya’s real and Sid has never been alone.

“I wonder if you’ll see him tonight,” says Taylor. Sid looks up at her. She looks thoughtful.

“I didn’t see him for two years,” says Sid. “I might never see him again.”

“You’re getting drafted next year, dumbo,” says Taylor. “You’ll both be in the NHL and you can be friends then.”

“We are friends,” says Sid. He’s so grateful that Taylor believes him. “I mean. I thought we were, but that was when I didn’t know he was real. Maybe we’re not really friends. Maybe we’ll hate each other.”

“Stupid, you’ve known him since you were young! Now you can be real friends, not dream friends,” says Taylor. “Are you going to clean up the ice cream?”

“What? Oh.”

Taylor is nice enough to help him clean up the ice cream he dropped all over his lap and the floor, but still enough of a brat that she rats him out immediately when Mom and Dad get home. “Sid swore when his friend got drafted,” she tells their mom before she even makes it through the door after their dad. “He said--”

“You don’t need to repeat it,” says Sid hurriedly. “I’ll do chores or whatever.”

Mom looks at them funny. “I didn’t know you had a friend who was getting drafted today,” she says.

“Yeah, sort of,” says Sid. He glares at Taylor who sticks her tongue out at him.

“Taylor, Sid, stop,” says Mom. “Sid, you are way too old to fight with your sister. Come help us bring in the groceries.”

“Sid!” yells their dad from the kitchen. “Did you feed your sister ice cream?”

“Uh--”

“Sidney, what has gotten into you?” says Mom, marveling. “I think you’ve lost television privileges for the week.”

Sid thinks about arguing that for a second but he stands to lose a whole lot more than television if this conversation continues and he needs to use the internet to look up Zhenya. “Okay,” he says.

Their mother shakes her head. “Go get the groceries,” she says and he hurries outside before he can get in anymore trouble.

There isn’t a whole lot that Sid can read, in English, about Zhenya online and there isn’t likely to be anything in the local paper about him tomorrow, or nothing of substance at least. He goes for a long, long run before dinner. Maybe if he’s tired, he’ll dream with Zhenya tonight. He doesn’t think that’s how it works, but maybe, just maybe.

He goes to bed early and falls asleep almost immediately, but all he sees in his dream is the empty rink in Rimouski. He skates slowly, by himself. It doesn’t matter, he reminds himself. He’ll see Zhenya in a year when he makes it to the NHL.

 

 

Zhenya sits on a couch in Denis’ nice apartment, drinking Denis’ nice beer, and feeling very sorry for himself. He was so stupid to sign with Metallurg. He was so stupid to leave America in the first place. He could be playing in the NHL next year if he weren’t so stupid.

“Hey,” says Denis, passing behind him and flicking him in the back of the head. “Did you read about the draft yesterday?”

Zhenya sort of forgot that it was yesterday, because he has been busy wallowing in his feelings. But Pittsburgh got the first pick and there’s been a lot of noise this year about a Canadian kid named Sidney Crosby, so Zhenya figures out that he should at least read about the draft to see if Pittsburgh got him. Maybe he’ll get to play with him. If he ever gets out of Russia

Denis doesn’t get a newspaper so Zhenya has to leave his apartment to go find one, especially since Denis won’t let him use his computer. Denis claims he has to work or whatever. Zhenya grumbles at him and then puts on a jacket and a hat.

It takes a lot of arguing with a newsagent about whether or not he could look through the newspapers to see if the sports sections said anything meaningful, but he finally gets his newspaper with a long article about the draft that the newsagent says is good. The newsagent doesn’t let him look though so Zhenya has no idea what he’s going to get, besides the fact that it’s a three page long article.

He goes to a cafe and orders a cup of coffee and opens the newspaper to the sport section. It better be a good article because he paid 30 rubles for it.

He skims past all the nonsense about it being a beautiful day in Ottawa and how great the future of hockey is and finds out that Crosby went first overall. The article lists Crosby’s achievements and how he’s a stand-up player, going to be a great leader in the locker room, and how he’ll tear it up with Malkin eventually.

There’s a grainy photo of Crosby standing on the draft stage in an over-sized Penguins jersey smiling nervously. Zhenya barely glances at it as he takes a sip of coffee and then double-takes so hard that he spills coffee all over his shirt.

It’s Sid. It’s his Sid. It can’t be his Sid, because his Sid is not real, but it’s his Sid. Dark curly hair, goofy smile even while he’s nervous, strong features.

“What the fuck,” says Zhenya out loud. A grandmother with her granddaughters at the table next to him shushes him, glaring while her grandchildren giggle.

“Sorry,” says Zhenya. He holds up the paper to his face, peering at the photo. It can’t be him. Sid isn’t real. There’s no way this is Sid. But it is, the boy in the photo looks exactly like Zhenya remembers from his last dream a year ago, though with a little less baby fat.

Zhenya might be losing it. Maybe he’s still asleep. He puts down the newspaper and drinks half of his coffee, which burns his tongue just enough for Zhenya to think that, yeah, he’s awake.

He picks up the newspaper. He puts it down again. He drinks the rest of his coffee, staring out of the window of the cafe. He rubs at the coffee on his shirt with a paper napkin. He tries to reconcile it all.

Sid isn’t real, he decides. Sid is a dream. Crosby just sort of looks like his Sid. The photo isn’t very good anyway. Zhenya is probably imagining things because he’s sad like he was when he was young. He misses his friend, that’s all. He shouldn’t put all that on some guy he’s never met.

He resists the urge to look at the photo again. He tosses the newspaper in the trash on his way out the door.

 

 

Sid doesn’t see Zhenya for two years, even in his dreams, and the waiting almost kills him. When they finally see each other again, it’s in the very real world of Mario’s front porch a week after Zhenya comes to Pittsburgh.

“Sid,” says Zhenya, standing on the porch. He looks amazed; he looks overwhelmed. Sid hates to make him feel even more overwhelmed after what’s he’s gone through this summer, but he can’t help it, he can’t stop himself from reaching out. He wants to touch Zhenya. He has to know that Zhenya is real.

“Hi Sid,” says Zhenya, shy, nervous, incredibly alive.

Sid launches himself at Zhenya, wrapping his arms tightly around him. Zhenya hugs him back just as hard.

“The future of the franchise looks bright,” Sid hears Mario say wryly to Gonch.

“How long?” Zhenya whispers.

“How long since I knew? Since you got drafted,” Sid whispers back. “I saw you on television and I knew you were real.”

“I’m think I imagine,” says Zhenya, “I read about draft, I’m think, this not my Sid. No way.”

“It is. I am,” says Sid. “I’m yours.”

“Good,” says Zhenya. He tightens his arms around Sid. “I’m miss you.”

“I missed you too,” says Sid.

“But you still short,” says Zhenya. Sid can hear him smiling. He lets go and steps back so he can glare at Zhenya properly. “I grew two inches!”

Zhenya raises his eyebrows, a look that is so classically the Zhenya Sid remembers so vividly from his dreams as a teen. Sid laughs. “Whatever, I bet your backchecking still sucks.”

“You want play Horse? Sid.”

“All right,” says Mario. “Sorry to break up...whatever is going on here, but dinner is getting cold?” He sounds a little uncertain. Sid glances at him and Gonch and looks back at Zhenya. This is way more important than them.

“What do I call you?” Sid asks Zhenya.

“His name is Evgeni?” says Gonch, confused. “Sid, what is going on?”

“Zhenya,” Zhenya says to Sid. “Zhenya, I’m Zhenya.”

“Zhenya,” says Sid. Zhenya rolls his eyes at his pronunciation -- Sid has never gotten it right, in that shared language of their dreams. Zhenya always had a Russian accent when he spoke; Sid knows he sounds painfully Nova Scotian in comparison. It hadn’t occurred to him until he reviewed footage of Zhenya getting drafted that Zhenya didn’t speak English very well outside of their dreams. But maybe Sid spoke Russian in Zhenya’s dreams.

Sid can feel himself smiling when Zhenya pokes his tongue at him. He knows he must look so ridiculous to Mario and Gonch and he doesn’t care. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

“I’m happy I’m come,” says Zhenya and he hugs Sid again.

Sid presses his face against Zhenya’s neck. Zhenya whispers, “I’m happy you real.”

Sid closes his eyes. “Me too,” he whispers back.

Zhenya kisses the top of Sid’s head. Mario says, “Sergei, have they met before?”

“No,” says Gonch, but he sounds hesitant.

“This is going to be weird, okay?” Sid mumbles to Zhenya. “Gonch and Mario already think we’re crazy and they don’t even know. The whole team is going to think we’re insane when we tell them. If we tell them.”

Zhenya ducks his head against the top of Sid’s. Sid can feel him take a deep breathe in and let it out slowly.

“Okay,” Zhenya says. “We got this.”


End file.
